1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to chutes for the drop delivery of material, articles or other items from the upper floors of a multi-storey building to a lower level. Such chutes (referred to as drop delivery chutes hereinafter) provide a quick and inexpensive means for delivering items to, for example, a ground floor or basement destination, when the items are either able to withstand the fall without damage or where damage is of no consequence.
The invention was developed for application to temporary drop delivery chutes as frequently used for the disposal of rubbish or debris from the above ground floors of a multi-storey building during construction of the building, and is described herein primarily with reference to drop delivery chutes for that usage. It will be appreciated however that it is applicable to drop delivery chutes generally, including permanent chutes such as those used, for example, for the delivery of soiled bed linen or the like from hospital wards to a basement laundry or collection facility.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The big majority of prior known drop delivery chutes for the disposal of debris during the construction of a multi-storey building have been of two types:
(i) Chutes comprising a plurality of truncated conical duct modules strung together to form an elongated downwardly extending duct wherein each module feeds into the one below. Usually the modules are only loosely linked together and require special arrangements for their overall support. Debris and like materials may be fed into the open top of the duct, but such chutes usually do not allow for the in-feed of material at points along the length of the duct. They are therefore expensive, time consuming to erect, limited as to the number of floors that may be serviced simultaneously and, because of their discontinuous nature they may release a good deal of dust into the atmosphere when in use. PA1 (ii) Chutes comprising a downwardly extending, fabricated metal duct and a plurality of inlet structures permitting material to be delivered into the duct at each floor serviced by the chute. Such multiple inlet chutes are usually secured by tie-beams or the like to the building structure, although it has been proposed hitherto to anchor the inlet structures to the respective floors for the support of the chute as a whole. The duct may be continuous, that is to say devoid of loose or ill fitting joints, and therefore may be substantially dust tight, but chutes of this kind and their supporting structures have usually been tailor made for each site, which is an expensive, and in the case of temporary rubbish disposal chutes, a particularly wasteful procedure.
Attempts have been made to provide multiple inlet, debris disposal chutes with continuous ducts utilising re-useable duct modules. Those modules have been in the form of open-topped and open-bottomed fabricated metal boxes, of which some are furnished with an inlet opening. In use they are fastened together, one upon another, to form a continuous duct. However, the floor spacing in multi-storey buildings varies from site to site, and this has meant that either a tailor made, non-standard "module" has been required between each floor or that each regular inlet module has not been able to be optimally placed relative to each floor for ease and convenience of use.